Press Releases

Transcript of Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food

Following is the transcript of a media session by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, at the Central Government Offices this (October 8) morning:

Reporter: Do you think dengue fever is going to spread in Hong Kong because a new type of dengue fever was discovered yesterday?

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: Let's not talk about spread. This is the first time that we have local cases in Hong Kong. Of course we need to really see what is going to happen next year. This is about the end of the mosquito breeding session and it is going to be usually quite quiescent. So we have a breathing space to work. We have been doing these mosquito control programmes in the last three years quite intensively. This year the mosquito control programmes started much earlier but as you recognise these mosquitoes are all over the place. You can never eliminate mosquitoes. You can only control the quantity and numbers. With the large numbers of people coming through and into Hong Kong, there is always a chance of bringing dengue into Hong Kong because the dengue virus is in the blood before the symptoms erupt. Many people are incubating dengue. They may by chance come to Hong Kong. They may by chance be bitten by mosquitoes. So there is always a danger of dengue infection being brought into Hong Kong. The most effective way obviously is to control the mosquito population. You cannot eliminate mosquitoes as you well know. We should bring it down to a certain level so that the chance of dengue taking hold in Hong Kong will be minimal. So the whole strategy is to control the mosquito population. The public should not be concerned if there are one or two cases. Obviously the fact that we are having local cases alerts us that we need to do something to make sure that dengue doesn't have foothold in Hong Kong and certainly not to have an epidemic, large outbreaks. We have this very localised outbreak in Ma Wan and three other sporadic cases in the territory. We do expect in future that there will be sporadic cases in Hong Kong but the whole question is really to control it, not to eliminate it. We can never eliminate the threat of dengue simply because we are surrounded by places where dengue is very rampant. As you have heard, there are millions of cases of dengue every year. So there is always this danger. The only strategy is to try to control it.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion)

Tuesday, October 8, 2002